(In the field of this invention, there is some lack of uniformity in terminology, with the term "pitted" sometimes being used to refer to fruit which has pits, and other times being used to refer to fruit from which pits have been removed. In the present text, the term "pitted" is used to refer to fruit from which pits have been removed, and the term "unpitted" is used to refer to fruit from which pits have not been removed. Pits are sometimes referred to herein as "stones".)
In my earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,632, issued Mar. 3, 1987, I have disclosed a machine for slicing oblong fruits such as olives. In that machine, olives from which the pits have already been removed are deposited on the upward-sloping carrying run of an endless conveyor which is made of a succession of rollers mounted to chains entrained about sprockets. The rollers have flexible disk-like fins of progressively increasing and decreasing diameter from fin to fin so that the olives tend to settle into pockets and orient with their lengths crosswise of the belt as the rollers are rotated. The belt conveys the olives into a shaft of slicing disks. Olive slices are received between slicing disks and an assisting roller pushes in the remainder of any olive only partially sliced through, except that contact of the slicing disks with any pit still contained in an olive pushes that olive more deeply into a respective inter-roller pocket by flexing the respective roller fins. At separate locations along the conveyor, a comb pulls the olive slices out from between the slicing disks, and the pocket-entrapped pit-containing olives are dislodged.
In that prior machine, the olives move along the conveyor belt suitably positioned between respective adjacent twos of the rotating rollers (as shown in detail in its FIGS. 5 and 6). This is the most suitable position for cutting, for the rollers are provided with curved concave areas (likewise clearly visible in its FIG. 5), and this, together with the rotating movement of the rollers during displacement results in the transversal alignment of the longer axes of the olives.
In accordance with another of the features of that machine, the rollers are resilient and are furthermore provided with fins on their periphery, which fins define necks (i.e. grooves) for the access thereto of the periphery of the cutting knives.
Due to the resilient nature of the rollers, when a pit-containing olive is displaced along the conveyor belt, as shown in its FIG. 6, and reaches the working area of the cutting knives, the knives bear down on the olive and slice it partially, and, on coming up against the pit, exert a radial pressure on the olive which is as a result lodged in the converging dihedral defined between the rollers and the knives, as shown in its FIG. 7. The resilient nature of the rollers allows deformation thereof which, as shown in its FIG. 9, results in the total radial displacement of the pit-containing olive with respect to the periphery of the knives and, therefore, continued movement of the conveyor belt and continued rotation of the set of knives. The pit-containing olive passes the point of tangency between the conveyor belt and the knives, without cutting the pit, so that the considerable force on the knives which would result from cutting the pit does not occur, thus limiting wear on the knife blades.
The unpitted olive is prevented from being pushed in between the rollers due to the fact that a greater effort than is needed to slice the olive meat is required to deform the rollers, and therefore the rollers will not be deformed in the case of unpitted olives where cutting is very easy, but will be deformed only when the cutting knives come up against a pit, the greater resistance thereof giving rise to a larger radial force which results in deformation of the rollers due to the fact that their resiliency is overcome.
With the passage of time, more experience has been gained and I have come to realize that, although in basic concept the prior machine is an advance over what was previously available, it is itself subject to improvement. Accordingly, I set about to design and have invented improvements in such a fruit slicing machine. Some of the improvements are ones which might be expected any time a second generation of a machine is designed, and I describe hereinbelow some improvements of that type, but others are ones which I believe result in an overall machine which would not have been expected to result from a mere second generation redesign project.
In common with the machine of the prior patent, the present invention provides a machine for slicing olives and similarly round but at least slightly elongated fruit from nearly all of which pits are missing, for instance because pits originally present in the fruit have been removed in a previous de-pitting operation. The machines include an endless conveyor belt entrained about drive and return sprockets so as to define a generally upwardly-facing carrying run, and a return run. This conveyor belt includes endless chains entrained about the sprockets, and a series of transversally extending rollers mounted to the chains and each adapted to be rotated about its own longitudinal axis. Each roller includes a shaft having a succession of alternating annular protrusions and recesses which provide each each roller being provided with an undulating generatrix of alternatingly greater and lesser diameter along its length. The rollers are ranked along the endless conveyor belt so that a plurality of upwardly open fruit-receiving pockets is defined by corresponding lesser diameter regions of each two adjacent ones of the rollers. The lowness of amplitude of surface undulation and the proximity of adjacent rollers are sufficient to prevent fruits received in the pockets from falling through the carrying run of the endless conveyor belt. A fruit slicing station is juxtaposed with a relatively downstream region of the carrying run of the endless conveyor belt. The fruit slicing station includes transversally extending shafts having a series of disk-shaped fruit slicing knives mounted thereto with such radial extent and such close spacing between adjacent knives longitudinally of this shaft that as the rollers pass said fruit slicing station, each disk-shaped knife enters into a respective space between a respective two adjoining disks on the adjacent shaft and at least two disk-shaped knives intersect each respective pocket for cutting each respective unpitted fruit into at least three slices. A fruit supplying station is juxtaposed with the carrying run of the endless conveyor belt upstream of the fruit slicing station. At the fruit supplying station a hopper is provided for depositing on the endless conveyor belt a supply of generally randomly-oriented unpitted fruit. This depositing hopper and the conveyor are designed for limiting the depth of fruit being supplied to at least approximately a single layer.
The rollers are power-rotated as they pass from juxtaposition with said fruit supplying station to juxtaposition with said fruit slicing station, so that individual fruit come to occupy respective ones of said pockets, and such fruit become oriented with their longitudinal axes at least approximately aligned transversally of said endless conveyor belt. Combs are associated with the fruit slicing knives relatively downstream of the cutting station, for freeing fruit slices from temporary enlodgement between said fruit slicing knives so that said fruit slices may be collected as an outlet stream thereof.